Harmon strives to convey information about science through narrative storytelling — a form she has heard is somehow thriving at a time when many people read exclusively on tiny screens while moving from place to place. (She would be more skeptical of this if she didn’t find herself consuming many long-form pieces each week under similar conditions).

Autism has long been an interest of Harmon’s. Currently she is collecting examples of the intense special interests often held by individuals on the autism spectrum. If you have examples or stories about these, please send them to her at amy.harmon@gmail.com.

Harmon’s career began at The Michigan Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Michigan, where she earned a B.A. in American culture in 1990. In her first journalism job, as a researcher in the Detroit bureau of The Los Angeles Times, she ordered fax paper and wrote about the declining American auto industry. In 1993, Harmon transferred to the paper’s newsroom in Los Angeles, where she parlayed an exotic skill she had learned in college — sending e-mail — into a beat on the rise of the Internet as a social and business phenomenon.

Harmon is interested in all the ways science and technology shape how we live. She speaks frequently to audiences of scientists, students, parents and patients, and welcomes suggestions for good stories to pursue.